A typical line interface of a communication system with optical links generally includes three devices: an optical module that includes a serializer/deserializer (SerDes) component, a forward error correction (FEC) processor, and a framer. The interconnection between these devices is electrical and the maximum data rate per signal is typically less than the optical data rate. Thus, a multi-bit bus is generally required. Due to the physical implementation of the multi-bit bus data channels, different delays can be experienced between the SerDes component and the FEC processor or framer resulting in incorrect bit matching when reconstructing the original data stream received from the optical link. Generally, the different delays between the data channels can span several unit intervals (UIs) and are static. To facilitate proper reconstruction, selected data bits communicated along the data channels are accompanied by a synchronizer bit in a separate deskew channel.